A viral Facebook video that claims to show a mermaid woman washed up along the shore is nothing more than a hoax.
The mermaid was created for “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” in 2011, writes About.com’s David Emery.
“Yet another viral video purporting to show the body of a ”real mermaid“ washed up on an unspecified beach somewhere is making the rounds, but this latest attempt to convince us that mermaids exist is no more credible than previous examples we’ve seen. The video consists of a montage of still photos of a prop mermaid created by makeup and special effects artist Joel Harlow for the 2011 film Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. They don’t come any faker than that,” he writes.
Mermaid videos have been used by scammers in the past to spread bogus surveys, malware, and phishing attacks via Facebook.
According to Facebook a few months ago, the social media giant is trying to clean up spam for its users’ newsfeeds. “Some stories in News Feed use inaccurate language or formatting to try and trick people into clicking through to a website that contains only ads or a combination of frequently circulated content and ads. For instance, often these stories claim to link to a photo album but instead take the viewer to a website with just ads,” it reads.
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